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Lijun Sun

Title: 
Associate Professor
Academic title(s): 

Ph.D., P.Eng., William Dawson Scholar

Lijun Sun
Contact Information
Address: 

817 Sherbrooke Street West, Macdonald Engineering Building Rm 278C, Montreal, QC, Canada H3A 0C3

Phone: 
514-398-2198
Email address: 
lijun.sun [at] mcgill.ca
Biography: 

Professor Sun’s research centers on the area of urban computing and smart transportation, developing innovative methodologies and applications to address efficiency, resilience, and sustainability issues in urban transportation systems. In particular, he is interested in integrating advances in mobile sensing and machine learning into human mobility modeling, agent-based simulation, and intelligent transportation systems to explore how big data, artificial intelligence, and cyber-physical systems could benefit urban life and help build smart cities. His work has been featured in popular media outlets, including Wired, Citylab, Scientific American, and MIT Technology Review.

Degree(s): 
  • Ph.D., Civil Engineering (Transportation), National University of Singapore, Singapore (2015)
  • B.Eng., Civil Engineering, Tsinghua University, China (2011)
Areas of expertise: 

Transportation Engineering

Courses: 
  • CIVE 319. Transportation Engineering.

    Credits: 3
    Offered by: Civil Engineering (Faculty of Engineering)
    This course is not offered this catalogue year.

    Description

    Introduction to design and operating principles and procedures for surface transportation systems, including vehicle motion and performance, pavements, geometric design of roadbeds, vehicle flow and capacity, traffic control, demand, supply and cost concepts.
    • (3-1-5)
    • Prerequisites: CIVE 208 and COMP 208.
    • Corequisite: CIVE 302

    Most students use Visual Schedule Builder (VSB) to organize their schedules. VSB helps you plan class schedules, travel time, and more.

  • CIVE 324. Sustainable Project Management.

    Credits: 3
    Offered by: Civil Engineering (Faculty of Engineering)
    This course is not offered this catalogue year.

    Description

    Lifecycle approach to project and construction management. Sustainable practices are introduced at all project stages: Team formation, materials and equipment use, cost estimation and economic valuation, financing, scheduling, quality control and safety, monitoring and performance assessment, decision-making.
    • (3-1-5)
    • Prerequisites: CIVE 208 and FACC 300.

    Most students use Visual Schedule Builder (VSB) to organize their schedules. VSB helps you plan class schedules, travel time, and more.

  • CIVE 440. Traffic Engineering and Simulation.

    Credits: 3
    Offered by: Civil Engineering (Faculty of Engineering)
    This course is not offered this catalogue year.

    Description

    Driver, vehicle and traffic flow characteristics; origin-destination studies, traffic studies and analysis, queuing theory applications, microsimulation, highway design and capacity analysis, non-motorized facility design, HOV lane design, public transportation priority design, parking analysis, traffic signal design and control, traffic microsimulation with HCS, VISSIM and SYNCHRO.
    • (3-3-3)
    • Prerequisite: CIVE 319 (a D grade is acceptable for prerequisite purposes)

    Most students use Visual Schedule Builder (VSB) to organize their schedules. VSB helps you plan class schedules, travel time, and more.

  • CIVE 542. Transportation Network Analysis.

    Credits: 3
    Offered by: Civil Engineering (Faculty of Engineering)
    This course is not offered this catalogue year.

    Description

    Introduction to transportation network algorithms; analytical frameworks used in traditional transportation network software, including routing algorithms, deterministic equilibrium approach, static traffic assignment, dynamic traffic assignment, vehicle routing algorithms, network reliability and design and several stochastic variants.
    • Prerequisite: CIVE 208.
    • Note: (3-0-6)

    Most students use Visual Schedule Builder (VSB) to organize their schedules. VSB helps you plan class schedules, travel time, and more.

  • CIVE 648. Special Topics in Civil Engineering.

    Credits: 4
    Offered by: Civil Engineering (Graduate Studies)
    This course is not offered this catalogue year.

    Description

    Special topics of an advanced nature relating to Civil Engineering will be presented by staff and visiting lecturers.

    Most students use Visual Schedule Builder (VSB) to organize their schedules. VSB helps you plan class schedules, travel time, and more.

  • CIVE 650. Spatiotemporal Data Mining.

    Credits: 4
    Offered by: Civil Engineering (Graduate Studies)
    This course is not offered this catalogue year.

    Description

    Introduction to spatiotemporal sensing data and general research questions (imputation, forecasting, kriging, classification, regression, anomaly detection). Overview of traditional models and techniques in modeling temporal processes, spatial processes, and spatiotemporal processes. Introduction of state-of-the-art methods for large-scale data sets, including low-rank tensor learning, spectral methods, Gaussian process regression, graph signal processing, and deep neural networks.
    • Prerequisite: Permission of the instructor.

    Most students use Visual Schedule Builder (VSB) to organize their schedules. VSB helps you plan class schedules, travel time, and more.

Office: 
Macdonald Engineering Building, Room 278C
Research areas: 
Transportation Engineering
TISED
Selected publications: 
  • Alabdulkareem, A., Frank, M.R., Sun, L., AlShebli, B., Hidalgo, C., Rahwan, I., 2018. Unpacking the polarization of workplace skills. Science Advances 4(7), eaao6030.
  • Sun, L., Erath, A., Cai, M., 2018. A hierarchical mixture modeling framework for population synthesis. Transportation Research Part B: Methodological 114, 199–212. 
  • Frank, M.R., Obradovich, N., Sun, L., Woon, W.L., LeVeck, B.L., Rahwan, I., 2018. Detecting reciprocity at a global scale. Science Advances 4(1), eaao5348.
  • Sun, L., Yin, Y., 2017. Discovering themes and trends in transportation research using topic modeling. Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies 77, 49–66.
  • Sun, L., Axhausen, K.W., 2016. Understanding urban mobility patterns with a probabilistic tensor factorization framework. Transportation Research Part B: Methodological 91, 511–524.
  • Sun, L., Lu, Y., Jin, J.G., Lee, D.-H., Axhausen, K.W., 2015. An integrated Bayesian approach for passenger flow assignment in metro networks. Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies 52, 116–131.
  • Sun, L., Erath, A., 2015. A Bayesian network approach for population synthesis. Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies 61, 49–62.
  • Sun, L., Jin, J.G., Axhausen, K.W., Lee, D.-H., Cebrian, M., 2015. Quantifying long-term evolution of intra-urban spatial interactions. Journal of The Royal Society Interface 12, 20141089.
  • Jin, J.G., Tang, L.C., Sun, L., Lee, D.-H., 2014. Enhancing metro network resilience via localized integration with bus services. Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review 63, 17–30.
  • Sun, L., Axhausen, K.W., Lee, D.-H., Cebrian, M., 2014. Efficient detection of contagious outbreaks in massive metropolitan encounter networks. Scientific Reports 4, 5099.
  • Sun, L., Jin, J.G., Lee, D.-H., Axhausen, K.W., Erath, A., 2014. Demand-driven timetable design for metro services. Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies 46, 284–299. 
  • Sun, L., Axhausen, K.W., Lee, D.-H., Huang, X., 2013. Understanding metropolitan patterns of daily encounters. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 110, 13774–9.
Areas of interest: 
  • Urban computing & smart cities
  • Machine learning for mobility modeling
  • Intelligent transportation systems
  • Spatio-temporal traffic state modeling/predication
  • Infrastructure resilience
  • Data-driven urban/transportation systems modeling
  • Human mobility and travel behavior
  • Agent-based modeling and simulation
  • Public transportation operation & planning
Professional activities: 
  • Postdoctoral Associate, MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA (2015-2017)
  • Researcher Fellow, Future Cities Laboratory, Singapore-ETH Center, Singapore (2014-2015)
  • Visiting Research, National ICT Australia (CSIRO’s Data61 now), Australia (2015-2015)
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